Chapter Twenty-six

``I don't know,'' said Zaphod, for what seemed to him like the
thirty-seventh time, ``they could have killed me, but they didn't.
Maybe they just thought I was a kind of wonderful guy or something. I
could understand that.''

The others silently registered their opinions of this theory.

Zaphod lay on the cold floor of the flight deck. His back seemed to
wrestle the floor as pain thudded through him and banged at his heads.

``I think,'' he whispered, ``that there is something wrong with those
anodized dudes, something fundamentally weird.''

``Hey, baby,'' he said to Trillian, hoping this would make up for his
previous behaviour.

``You all right?'' she said gently.

``Yeah,'' he said, ``I'm fine.''

``Good,'' she said, and walked away to think. She stared at the huge
visiscreen over the flight couches and, twisting a switch, she flipped
local images over it. One image was the blankness of the Dust Cloud.
One was the sun of Krikkit. One was Krikkit itself. She flipped
between them fiercely.

``No,'' said Slartibartfast, gravely. ``Our course is clear.'' He
furrowed his brow until you could grow some of the smaller root
vegetables in it. He stood up, he paced around. When he spoke again,
what he said frightened him so much he had to sit down again.

``We must go down to Krikkit,'' he said. A deep sigh shook his old
frame and his eyes seemed almost to rattle in their sockets.

``That,'' said Ford quietly, ``is because we don't care enough. I
told you.''

He swung his feet up on the instrument panel and picked fitfully at
something on one of his fingernails.

``But unless we determine to take action,'' said the old man
querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in
his nature, ``then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die.
Surely we care about that?''

``Not enough to want to get killed over it,'' said Ford. He put on a
sort of hollow smile and flipped it round the room at anyone who
wanted to see it.

Slartibartfast clearly found this point of view extremely seductive
and he fought against it. He turned again to Zaphod who was gritting
his teeth and sweating with the pain.

``You surely must have some idea,'' he said, ``of why they spared your
life. It seems most strange and unusual.''

``I kind of think they didn't even know,'' shrugged Zaphod. ``I told
you. They hit me with the most feeble blast, just knocked me out,
right? They lugged me into their ship, dumped me into a corner and
ignored me. Like they were embarrassed about me being there. If I
said anything they knocked me out again. We had some great
conversations. `Hey ... ugh!' `Hi there ... ugh!' `I wonder
...ugh!' Kept me amused for hours, you know.'' He winced again.

He was toying with something in his fingers. He held it up. It was
the Gold Bail --- the Heart of Gold, the heart of the Infinite
Improbability Drive. Only that and the Wooden Pillar had survived the
destruction of the Lock intact.

``I hear your ship can move a bit,'' he said. ``So how would you like
to zip me back to mine before you ...''

``Will you not help us?'' said Slartibartfast.

``I'd love to stay and help you save the Galaxy,'' insisted Zaphod,
rising himself up on to his shoulders, ``but I have the mother and
father of a pair of headaches, and I feel a lot of little headaches
coming on. But next time it needs saving, I'm your guy. Hey, Trillian
baby?''